Although there had been terrorist attacks using chemical agents &ndash such as the

Although there had been terrorist attacks using chemical agents – such as the nerve gas used on the Tokyo underground – the anthrax letters sent through the US mail created unparalleled psychological and financial damage, quite apart from the illness and deaths among those directly involved.
Despite the concern raised by the use of anthrax as a terrorist weapon, attempts at reinvigorating the international treaty on biological weapons appear to be deadlocked. And it may be fair to say that we do go on and on about things sometimes. Please do not let this happen again.yours etcFrom Mrs Betty JonesSir: May I protest vehemently against the use of the expression “to welsh on someone”, which is a direct slur on the entire Welsh nation? I realise that nobody has actually used the expression in any of these letters. Burma? Well, I cannot think of any sport with which Burma is associated. There may be some vestige of cricket from the days of British rule, but that could only be verified from Wisden, the Bible of cricket.yours etcFrom Mr Len FalstaffSir: Not again! We at the Humanist Word Check Society are regularly driven to distraction by the constant misuse of the word “Bible” as if it meant an authoritative reference work It is nothing of the sort.

One wonders what Jeffrey Archer did in a previous life to deserve all this!Incidentally, the question of what Buddhists shout at football matches is academic, as I cannot think of any Buddhist nations that DO play football Sri Lanka is good at cricket Thailand produces good boxers. I cannot let such a flagrant misuse of the word “karma” pass without protest We in the West use “karma” as if it just meant blind fate Quite the opposite. The chanting of a football crowd is not a mantra and to call it such is to lower the respect in which religion is held.Incidentally, the story that Buddhist football crowds do not cheer but chant mantras is purely apocryphal!yours etcFrom Dr Donald TrevisSir: With reference to the previous letter, may I object to Mrs Rigby’s unthinking use of the word “apocryphal”? These days the word is used as meaning just “unreliable”, but the books of the Apocrypha were a very valid part of the Bible until omitted by later Church fathers. Even his recent election, which gave him a 100 per cent majority and caused everyone to jeer at the one-sidedness of it, had an advantage over the last American presidential election. In that, as you will remember, Bush beat Gore even though Gore got the most votes, and because of that – and because of all those strange goings on in Florida – there has always been a feeling that the wrong man got into the White House. No one can ever say that Saddam Hussein was not the clear winner in HIS election – no recounts necessary there! – so I wish people would not keep up this ceaseless mantra of Saddam being the devil incarnate.

yours etcFrom Mrs Mavis RigbySir: With reference to the previous letter, may I object to Sir Tom Peartree’s unthinking misuse of the word “mantra”?We at the Buddhist/Hindu Society feel very frustrated when we see “mantra” being used to mean a reiterated slogan or piece of unthinking propaganda. Swiss Life, the insurer that is banking on convincing shareholders to back a rights issue to rescue the company’s ailing finances, yesterday revealed its situation was even more precarious than first thought due to an accounting error that understated its investment losses.
The group reported its biggest ever loss last month of 386m Swiss francs (£165m), but this was understated by Sfr192m. Financial advisers trying to help clients who are unsure of what to do with their investment are disappointed that Pru has drip-fed the bad news after announcing bonus cuts only two months ago.. As a result, Pru has not seen the depletion in reserves experienced by other insurers who have stuck with the stock market. But the tactical switch to reduce equity content to about 50 per cent of the fund has not cushioned policyholders from stock market falls completely.Investors had their final payouts cut by between 5 and 10 per cent last month. Anyone who has been investing for more than five years can remove only £10,000 in one year without having an MVA applied. The size of the MVA is decided on a case-by-case basis.The company shifted a substantial part of its £80bn with-profits fund portfolio out of equities into bonds at the end of 1999.